I just finished watching this video at Bike Portland and was completely blown away with what New York City has accomplished in a very short time under their new DOT Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan. She’s only been at work as the Commissioner for about a year and a half, but look at what has been accomplished! They have created separated bicycle lanes on many major thoroughfares, are working on separated bus lanes, and took away some lanes from cars in order to create great public spaces quickly and cheaply.
When you watch the street clips in the interview, note how the auto traffic in their redesigned spaces behaves in a civilized and predictable fashion, and imagine how some of our own roads in Austin, like South Congress perhaps (which, hey, is supposed to be one of our great pedestrian-oriented spaces) could be.
The best thing to take from this video is what kind of incredible change can be accomplished, and how fast, if there is only the political will for change. Seeing results like this is yet another reason to sign the Austin Bike Plan Petition!
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on Oct 27th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Her work is truly amazing.
As for Austin, when I recently visited for the first time I was totally astounded at how consistently dangerous the most fun neighborhoods are. You risk life and limb to get an ice cream cone on the other side of South Congress! Feel free to watch the bats — but one false move and your stroller joins the 40 mph traffic mere inches away.
On the topic of the bats… it seems crazy to cultivate a huge tourist event that is so patently dangerous. Can the city really claim innocence when some tourist falls into the ever present herd of autos flying over the bridge? With thousands of people vying for space and precariously passing each other on that sidewalk the city clearly should give them a lane of traffic for that hour.
on Jan 19th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
[...] sounds a lot like what New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is doing to create public space and slow cars down on some of the widest, busiest [...]